Regarding: "I once slipped while running on a slippery dock and instead of landing on the edge of the wood slats and breaking my spine and starting a new life as a paraplegic, I landed fully in the water (which covers three-quarters of the world so statistically your chances are good even if they aren't really)..."...

Now aren't you sorry you wrote so disparagingly of Canoe Trips a week ago, comparing them to The Turd Blossom? Surely landing in water is much better than landing in a turd blossom.

Tom.

A 10-year-old girl -- particularly in our household -- doesn't want to listen to the Byrds: "To everything, turn turn turn, there is a season, turn turn turn" -- but this is what this column is all about, isn't it? Big thanks for small blessings; recognizing importance when it crosses your path: these are things I hope to pass along, battling Disney TV and I'm-cooler-than-you-are battles with her little sister (8) all the way.

BTW, my oldest (Cassidy) was invited to an advanced writing class this summer and she loved it. I'll make sure she reads this column. And no, we don't require a helmet every time she rides her bike.

The last four paragraphs struck me. The teacher I remember best from VMI Class of '62 was Col. Herbert E. "Butch" Ritchey, who taught Organic Chemistry, and had been there since the late '20's or early 1930's or so. Butch was short for "The Butcher", because when the class went to the blackboards to write out the chemical reactions from assignment slips you drew like straws, you hoped he wouldn't get to you before the end of the period. Otherwise, you might hear something like "Mr. P----; take a rake and scrape that shit off the blackboard before the janitor sees it and gets confused!" or "Oh, no; that's all wrong." And he'd tear your work to shreds in a minute or two.

After my 6 1/2 years in the army, I went back to VMI for 2 1/2 years and taught Rat [freshman] Chemistry and Organic Lab, and had the great privilege of working with him up until he died.

Thanks for this.

I don't think that the bump is universally applied as Garrison would have it. My experience has been that the things that give you a bump (low lintels, overhangs, being laid off due to off shoring, etc) are rarely experienced by those who live in an environment where they can afford high lintels, 20 foot ceilings, 5 draft deferments, etc. Those bumps that we experience, and live through, are badges of honor that remind us that we have a responsibility to ourselves, our families, our nation and our world, to watch where we are going, and to recover gracefully when we suffer misfortune. They remind us to spell-check because we can do so, and stand taller for the ability. They remind us that doing the right thing is the right thing to do, and that we should feel sorry for spoiled brats when we aren't feeling angry or disappointed in them. I have a little dent in my bald head left over from when I hit a pole-mounted fireman's box while riding my bike as a kid. It taught me to look where I was riding instead of lolly-gagging. It taught me that I was human and that I was lucky to be alive, let alone have a concussion. It taught me that my mortality was an opportunity to take responsibility and do the right thing. Badges are given to those in authority, and those who work for them. They are emblems of honor and responsibility. Bumps are good. Pity those who don't have them.

ejb

Sometimes, when Life hands you lemons, you should fall on them.

I've said that to myself about many a student paper, but never written it on one. Maybe I should start.

Here's a link to a related article about our sometimes frivolous attitude towards what can be a life changing event:

http://www.steadyfootsteps.org/2007/08/traumatic_head_injury_as_literary_device.html

GK,

Number 4 is the First Noble Truth of Buddhism: that Life Is Suffering. It's almost too simple for a Lutheran middle aged man to get his head around. But if you can, it removes a lot of one's interior dialogue. You should look into the Dharma of Sakyamuni Buddha. It'd probably take the rest of your life to understand it. Lord knows it's taken me 35 years to even begin to understand it. The language just doesn't translate. But it makes sense. Brilliant piece by the way.

GW

I am careful about accidents but of course they happen. Once in Burlington, VT I was walking with my daughter and a few of her friends. I was watching them, watching the rocks on the main street, when I bumped but really bumped into a column of concrete.

The kids, aged 7, thought this hysterical. "Do that again" was the gist. I, too, stopped to examine the womp/experience. My head felt like everything had just fallen into not out of place. I was astounded that I didn't hurt but felt a sudden coherence. Odd, how I loved that bump...

The segue to your teacher was lovely. My worst/best teacher was named only Madame. She was our high school french teacher, with a Brooklyn accent. Everyone was terrified of her, including my younger self.

Only decades later did I realize that she was, far and away, the best teacher in that public high school. 40 years later and I can still speak passable French, and somehow I got the accent she did not. I think of her often and, like you, feel that her stringent self was a route to a foreign language and another side of myself, one of the few things from the late 50's that I remember with awe. thanks, great column.

you should. not-so-funny bike joke:

q: what do you call someone who doesn't wear a helmet when they ride their bike?

a: an organ donor.

In journalism school I had a great teacher named Bill Dorman. If he had a dent in his head we couldn't have seen it, because of the wild crazy curly hair he had. (It was the late 1970's/early 1980's.... time of "White Guy Afros.")

He also -- while a former Berkeley radical instead of an ex-Marine -- used to urge us to do our best, and would call us on it when we didn't.

Once, when the front page of the student paper, the State Hornet, ran without any headlines because (I think) we were too drunk late that production night to notice, he held it up in his War Peace, and Mass Media class (which most of the Hornet staff took) the next day. "Okay... what's wrong with this picture?" and followed it with "I know that this is supposed to be a learning experience but do you have to learn from a new mistake EVERY ISSUE?"

He also would write sardonic little asides in our margins. My two favorites were: "B.S. is no substitute for brilliance." and "YOU can do better than this." His way of letting me know he thought I was talented, and that I should live up to his view of me.

I miss Bill.....no one else could give you a kick in the ass with so much affection.

--Stacy Selmants